HP confirms breakup, layoffs hit an entire Google’s worth of employees

HP had 317,000 employees as of October 2013. The company got rid of 36,000 people by July of this year. HP was planning total "employee reductions" of 45,000 to 50,000 people, but it will now push that to 55,000 "to fund investment opportunities in R&D and sales," the company said in a presentation for investors today.

HP plans to break into two by the end of October 2015. One of the new, separate companies will be Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, focusing on "servers, storage, networking, converged systems, services and software as well as its OpenStack Helion cloud platform," HP said. HP CEO Meg Whitman will be CEO of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.

HP's personal systems and printing businesses will become HP Inc. and have "a strong roadmap into the most exciting new technologies like 3D printing and new computing experiences," HP said. Dion Weisler, executive VP of the printing and personal systems division, will be HP Inc. CEO. Whitman will chair the HP Inc. board.

Based on current financials, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise would have $58.5 billion in revenue and operating profit of $6 billion. HP Inc. would have $57.2 billion in revenue and $5.4 billion in operating profit.

Previous HP CEO Leo Apotheker planned to spin out HP's PC division in 2011, but the plan was shelved and he was replaced by Whitman.

"After three years of work, we are now in a position of strength," HP's presentation said, explaining why "now is the right time" for the split. HP said that after the breakup, "partners and customers will have simpler and more nimble organizations with which to conduct business." The two companies will allegedly be "faster to respond to changing customer requirements and market dynamics."

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...

Kiran Upadhyay

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